hat. Suddenly he felt a straining and heaving among the men. The
line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall, and, with a convulsive
gasp that was intended for a cheer, the regiment began its journey.
The youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood the
movement at all, but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.

He fixed his eye upon a distant and prominent clump of trees where he
had concluded the enemy were to be met, and he ran toward it as toward
a goal. He had believed throughout that it was a mere question of
getting over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran
desperately, as if pursued for a murder. His face was drawn hard and
tight with the stress of his endeavor. His eyes were fixed in a lurid
glare. And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and inflamed
features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood, his wildly
swinging rifle, and banging accouterments, he looked to be an insane
soldier.

As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the
woods and thickets before it awakened. Yellow flames leaped toward it
from many directions. The forest made a tremendous objection.

The line lurched straight for a moment. Then the right wing swung
forward; it in turn was surpassed by the left. Afterward the center
careered to the front until the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass, but
an instant later the opposition of the bushes, trees, and uneven places
on the ground split the command and scattered it into detached clusters.

The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance. His eyes still
kept note of the clump of trees. From all places near it the clannish
yell of the enemy could be heard. The little flames of rifles leaped
from it. The song of the bullets was in the air and shells snarled
among the treetops. One tumbled directly into the middle of a hurrying
group and exploded in crimson fury. There was an instant spectacle of
a man, almost over it, throwing up his hands to shield his eyes.

Other men, punched by bullets, fell in grotesque agonies. The regiment
left a coherent trail of bodies.

They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an effect like a
revelation in the new appearance of the landscape. Some men working
madly at a battery were plain to them, and the opposing infantry's
lines were defined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.

It seemed to the youth that he saw everything. Each blad